Dirty Little Secrets
by VietAngel
Summary: A little trip inside Asha's not so pretty life, from her point of view. Also involves Max, Logan, & Alec.


**Title**: Dirty Little Secrets  
**Author**: VietAngel  
**Pairing**: Logan/Asha, Logan/Max, Alec/Asha, Alec/Max  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Warnings: **violence, profanity, mentions of sex  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own any of these characters, nor to I profit from them in any way.  
**Author's Note**: This is just a little something that suddenly popped into my head. If you like your DA characters perfect and sweet, this isn't the story for you. Nobody is an angel here.

I can no longer recall the exact moment when I became this woman. I am only a shadow of the woman I used to be…blonde and pure and righteous and good. My hair is dark brown now, has been for years…ever since I started this thing with him. Maybe I thought the color of my hair should match the way my soul feels…muddy, almost black. Maybe I thought that if I looked more like her he would love me back. Who's he? He's the man who owns my heart. The one who crushes it every single time we do this. His heart is a different story. It isn't mine to have. He's in love with another woman, but he's in this seedy motel room with me. It smells of sweat, and sex, and smoke from the awful tasting generic cigarette I'm poisoning myself with. It's a nasty habit I can't remember picking up, but I know it was around the time we started doing this. I'm pretty sure I do it to appease my guilt. Penance, I guess. I take a long drag and hold it until my lungs burn. Then I blow it out slowly, a wispy stream of white I can only see when the light outside the window intermittently flashes an angry red.

It's an unusually hot night for Seattle. The light flashes again, and again, and again…illuminating the room with its sick red glow. Every time it flashes I see him there on the other side of the bed. He's sleeping like a baby while I lie here hot, sticky, and sore…barely breathing, barely living. My head is pounding and that damn red light isn't helping. The way he's positioned combined with the annoying flashing light allows me to catch a glimpse of his wedding ring. I shut my eyes tightly as the dull ache of shame settles itself in my stomach at the same time the pain of unrequited love wraps about my heart and squeezes like a thirty foot python. I don't think he feels anymore. If he did he would lie awake like I do, but he never does. This isn't the Logan Cale I used to know. The Logan Cale I used to know would never hog the sheet while there's a naked woman lying beside him. The Logan I used to know would never be where we are now…in a motel room sleeping off the exhaustion of sex. No, sex is too nice a word for what we do. He has sex with her, he makes love to her…what he does to me is a completely different animal.

She's his angel and I'm his whore. I'm just his fuck toy, a body he can use and abuse. It's always the same. We meet in a seedy motel like this, a dark alley, a filthy bathroom stall in the back of an even filthier club…always the same routine. We meet somewhere and he rips my clothes off, then bangs me hard until it hurts so bad I get tears in my eyes and I think I must be bleeding; squeezes my wrists so tightly I have finger shaped bruises for days. When he's done, when he gets what he came for…he walks away, or rolls over and goes to sleep. No "hello", no sweet nothings whispered, no "goodbye", no "I'm sorry"…no concern at all, not for me. The only word I ever hear fall from his lips is "Max." When he's spilling himself in me and all over me he always screams her name, and every time I pray he'll scream "Asha", just once. I'm just his dirty little secret…and deep down he knows she has a dirty little secret of her own.

Oh no, Logan and I aren't the only players in this twisted little reindeer game. I'm married too. Alec and I were there when they got married…we sat there and smiled and bit our tongues until they bled so we could forever hold our peace. He loves her as much as I love Logan, and he can't have her either. She does to him what Logan does to me. He's her whore, the one she runs to when she needs a good fuck and nothing more. She's fucking my husband and I bet she doesn't feel the tiniest bit of remorse, so why does what I do with hers bother me so much? Why are we paying such a huge price for loving them? I guess that's why we got married. To make a big show of how much we didn't need them, how we were over them…but look at us now. We're the same Alec and I, two people who want what they'll never really have, two people who can't let go.

It's not that I don't love him. I love him with all my heart, and he feels the same about me…but it's not the same kind of love we feel for them. We're best friends. We're more like roommates with benefits than husband and wife. We give each other everything they deny us. He's the one who holds my hair when I'm sick, the one who tells me I'm beautiful, the one who makes love to me instead of fucking me, the one who treats me like porcelain instead of a rag doll. I'm the one who holds him close, spoons around him and kisses his shoulder. I'm the one who runs my fingers through his hair when he rests his head on my chest, and calms him when he's upset. What we have would be a beautiful marriage if it wasn't a farce. If we could love each other just a fraction as much as we love them we'd have something special, but instead we're consumed by them. They're the flames, we're the moths, and they always burn our wings.

We don't know why we allow them to use us like they do. It's all her fault, she started this game. Their happily ever after wasn't so happy after all. She ran into Alec's waiting arms at the first sign of a crack in their sugar coated armor. On paper Logan is the father, but their son has Alec's green eyes and we all know it. Logan tries to pretend he doesn't know, but that's what drove him into my waiting and willing body. She's the one he really wants to hurt, but I'm the one he takes it out on. Every time I come home broken and bruised, barely able to walk and with red rimmed eyes, Alec is there waiting for me. There's no hope for my soul or my heart, but he's always there to heal my body with a hot bath and his talented hands. He tells me that I should stop letting Logan use me; he tells me I deserve better than that…better than him. The purple bruises marring the milky white skin of my inner thighs always make him want to go kill Logan, but he doesn't…because she would hate him then, and with both of them it all comes down to her.

He thinks I don't know that he's hurting too. His pain doesn't always show on the outside like mine does, but I can see the scars on his heart…her footprints all over it as clearly as the claw marks she leaves all over his back. She does it to taunt me, to punish me for my encounters with Logan. She marks him so I know I'll never have either of them. Whoever said life's a bitch must not have ever met love.

Asha Barlow was a young woman with sparkling blue eyes, a brilliant smile, and all the optimism and hope in the world. I bear her name, but that's the only thing we have in common. I barely recognize myself in the mirror these days. Logan and I used to be friends. He used to be a person I could count on, he used to be like a big brother to me…but that was before she came along. She came along with her big brown eyes and her childhood trauma sob story and he was putty in her hands…and I was dog shit on the bottom of his shoe. It's understandable. What kind of man could ever love me? I'm weak, pining for a man who never wanted me and never will.

I could only imagine what my parents would think if they could see me now. I bet my dad never imagined that daddy's precious little girl would become daddy's little whore. They're probably rolling over in their graves right now. This isn't the kind of woman my mother taught me to be. She always told me that any man who can't pay attention to me unless he's between my legs isn't a man deserving of my love…and here I am loving one who can't pay attention to me even when he is. I should have heeded her warning, but there's nothing you can really do when your heart overrides your brain.

It's funny how I think about them now when I haven't thought about them in years. I guess it's normal to think about the good times when you're about to end it all. Yeah, tonight is the night Asha Barlow decided to find a backbone. For the first time since this thing got started, I'm the one who left him. For once he's going to wake up to find me long gone. There's no end to this cycle in sight, and I just can't live this way anymore. Not one more night of being her stand in. The warm water feels good against my skin and the lavender scent from the bubbles is so relaxing I barely feel the blade as I drag it across my left wrist, then my right.

As I watch the crimson swirl into the water my stomach flips and I feel like I want to throw up but I can't, and I don't know if it's the realization of what I've done or a side effect of the blood draining from my body so quickly. The water is deep scarlet now. I panic, I want to scream for help, jump out of this bathtub and run to the nearest phone…but I can't, I'm too weak to move. I left a letter for Alec by the door, but I know he's with her…it's why I chose tonight to do this. The panic soon subsides as I realize there's nothing left on this earth for me. No one to give a damn about me when I'm gone. I'm calm now. Ever the nerd, I find my mind wondering if Dante was right about hell…I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Vaguely, I register a door slamming, then footsteps running down the hall. It's Alec, he's home early, and by the faint sounds of his screams I figure he probably read the letter I left for him. I can barely feel his familiar strong arms around me as he scoops me out of the water and presses towels hard against my wrist. When he begins to breathe into my mouth and pound on my chest I feel nothing at all. It suddenly dawns on me that I'm not there at all. This time he can't be my savior.

Fin.


End file.
